Thank you for that information. I had assumed that it was below the intervention level, but that is higher than I would have guessed.

Did he bring the cutouts of Oppenheimer and Roosevelt and handed out T-shirts and newspapers? He put on quite the show at the MARC conference.

Sounds like you were exposed to a hefty dose of Steinhauser. 😉

This is below the FDA’s Derived Intervention Level for Cs-137 of 1200 Bq/kg as well as below the more stringent Japanese standard of 100 Bq/kg.

I stand corrected. The most recent update to the press release states that radionuclide analysis confirmed the presence of Cs-137 in one sample of breaded shrimp at a level of 68 Bq/kg.

We usually teach the students about the "Goiania incident" as one of the worst case scenarios for a lost source.

If you had a leaking Cs-137 capsule with sufficient activity to be used in food irradiation, then the shrimp would be the least of your concern. It would help to know if the contamination was on the food packaging or on the walls of the shipping containers.

Mantis Shrimp Takeover?

There was no Cs-137 found in the food, but the fact that multiple shipping containers at four ports showed up contaminated can give you nightmares. Makes you wonder what the containers were used for previously.

Especially if multiple containers are contaminated simultaneously. Makes you wonder what the containers were used for last.

No traces of Cs-137 were found in the food. The concerning part is that multiple shipping containers were contaminated at the same time.

#nukesky

In it we continue to expand our work on the separation of americium from curium using sodium bismuthate both as a oxidizer as well as a chromatographic material. In this paper the effect of different dispersal agents as well as of the ratio of sodium bismuthate to dispersal material is investigated.

Nothing says we care about the workforce pipeline than letting go of the newer employees.

In particular, funding for health physics, i.e., radiation safety and radiochemistry has suffered while nuclear engineering has been favored.

More funding for university programs would help with that. 😉 Seriously though, funding opportunities for nuclear science at universities have been decreasing or limited to a select few universities due to the consortium approach.

Let me know if you have travel finding some. Our program is located in Colorado, but there are several other programs across the country (although not as many as needed). The demand for health physicists is great right now. In 2022 there were close to 1000 jobs posted and only 78 students graduated.